Clayton, David

David was born in Marske, Yorkshire. He began his broadcasting career on hospital radio in Norwich, which he helped launch in November 1974.

He applied to BBC Radio Norfolk when they were looking to launch in 1980.

He joined the freelance presentation team in early 1981, working on Sunday mornings, where he built up an enthusiastic following of early risers.

In autumn 1983, he moved to a mid-morning programme and won a Sony award for the programme. He promptly went off to join BBC Radio 4 to make a series called The Local Network.

In 1981, David unsuccessfully auditioned several times for an announcing post at Anglia TV. Helen McDermott got the job in 1979, as they were looking to have a female join the team at that time.

In 1982, he became a well-known face and voice on Anglia TV as a continuity announcer. And a little later, c. 1983, he’d be seen presenting on the other side: BBC Look East. He also presented on BBC Radio Norfolk.

In 1991, he moved into the assistant editor’s chair and in 1998 became editor at the station.

David is a regular contributor to Let’s Talk magazine published by Archant, writing about motoring, TV and radio.

He was also a major contributor to Taking the Norfolk Air which celebrated 25 years of local radio in Norfolk. He’s a regular contributor to the Eastern Daily Press with a fortnightly opinion column on Thursdays.

Correspondence

David told Showreel how he broke into television announcing:

“Basically I was dabbling in local radio. I applied to be a continuity announcer at Anglia TV in Norwich.

“I failed twice – on the third attempt they didn’t take me but the station’s deputy head of presentation, Ray Castle, knew me from when he had attended dances at a local ballroom where I had been the DJ.

“He liked my disco music – he liked me! I was offered me some freelance shifts at Anglia and I worked there throughout 1982 quite regularly. He trusted me enough to give me an on-air audition which was in January 1982.

“I remember that during my first live link the programme failed to appear down the line from TVS so my first link was to a stand-by film. Helen McDermott stayed with me to hold my hand and we’ve been friends ever since.

“I later became a stand-in all over the place on BBC East TV in 1983, including from October 1983 taking over as the main Breakfast Time regional presenter and also doing some daytime shifts as well.

“I moved into more Look East newsreading and presenting and did some reporting and presenting on the Friday opt-out called Weekend and then East on Two, a regional weekly magazine programme. I also did many Children in Need programmes.

“I stopped as a regular in 1987 to take up a contract with BBC Radio 4, then came back to be deputy editor at BBC Radio Norfolk in 1991.”

David also spoke to us in the early 2000s, about his days at Anglia Television.

Inside the studio

“To get to the Continuity Studio C you had to go through the tranmission controller’s area where there was a place to sit and pass the time of day while the programmes were going out.

“Next to him was a lady who logged the actual times of transmission of things on a Gestetner duplicating skin with a good old typewriter. This was then (I presume) duplicated for general perusal the next day especially by the ad sales people.

“The continuity studio itself had a range of drapes and curtains as a backdrop and I seem to remember that you picked what contrasted best with what you were wearing. Sometimes the TC took a view as he had to adjust the camera to cope with whatever you chose.

“The actual desk you sat at was, I think, a modified office-type desk with a small control panel to switch on your lights – which you did at the last minute as they were very bright and warmed the place up quicker than the aircon could cool it down.

“You could also select various sources on one of the preview monitors. There was a large back-lit clock below the camera. The camera was remote controlled for pitch, pan and focus but I never remember it having a cover on it. It always had its technical guts exposed.

“I was told this was because it ran hot and this kept it cooler! I peered into it once, but only once!”

Tying the knot with BC

“At the time the commercials ran from a system of video tape cartridges which had some huge and noisy hydraulic system somewhere in the bowels of Anglia House.

“As far as I could tell this was similar to the radio idea of having jingles or ads on cartridges but the mechanism was much much bigger as the video tape in the cartridges had to start and run at a high speed.

“I recall the TCs didn’t trust the system fully and some were known to pre-record the ad break on normal video tape to ensure it went out. That was also a blessing for the announcer who knew the whole break would get transmitted without unpredictable gaps to fill with meaningless continuity drivel.

“I once witnessed the ad break video cartridges being assembled by this fearsome machinery – it was awesome!

“The continuity studio was by necessity small and had the usual collection of discarded announcer presents and letters, the odd pile of face powder compacts, hairbrushes and BC, the birthday club puppet.

“My debut as an announcer was with my hand up BC operating it for the on-duty day announcer. If you did an evening shift you came in to relieve the day announcer so he or she could get some lunch and a break. You also became the unofficial puppeteer around tea-time for the children’s birthday club.

“I think I was BC first to Katie Glass and had to crouch down at her side out of shot and try and make BC animated and cheeky.

“Michael Speake used to be quite ruthless with the puppet but Katie was the most frightening to work with. One of BC’s features was that one of your hands held a stick coming out of the base of him, the other hand was inside one of his paws.

“If you were announcing with Katie doing the puppet she had the habit of making BC grab your tie just at the last second and yanking downwards with some degree of violence.

“This then made your tie knot extremely small and tight to the point it was virtually impossible to undo it. So for the entire programme you had just linked to, you were struggling to actually undo and re-tie your tie.

“Short of cutting it off with scissors it was touch and go whether you could make yourself presentable for the next link. Sadly there wasn’t an equivalent female garment with which to exact your revenge when roles were reversed.”

Keeping in with the TCs

“Wandering out from the TC’s room there were men sitting at various consoles which were things like telecine, sound and various monitoring bays.

“I’m not sure what they did and mostly they were quite passive but when a breakdown happened people moved around quickly prodding and tweaking things.

“While I was at Anglia in 1982, Channel 4 came on air in the November, I think.

“The office on the front corner of Anglia House became the Channel 4 transmission suite which, as I understood it, was where local commercials would be inserted into the breaks but when it first went on air the suite was empty of people and a caption appeared in the break as there were no regional ads to start with.

“The nice thing about Channel 4 was it gave us another source to watch in the continuity studio, but dire warnings were issued – it was easy to get engrossed in another channel’s programme and not be ready for a link.

“Also while I was there Anglia were expanding and updating their equipment. They were also taking over the next door building – the old Norwich Post Office. This released space towards the front of Anglia House where the old reception area was.

“I remember one of the TCs excitedly showing me a new suite which was known as the transmission editing and recording suite and he was much taken with the sophistication of a new Grass Valley mixer.

“While he was showing me everything it could do, he missed a commercial break which was the greatest possible sin! I understand the log said something like ‘complete commercial break missed – TC and announcer in T.E.A.R.S.’

“It was always good to get on the right side of your TC because if you did he was always happy to grant you a ‘name super’ at the end of the night. In other words while you were saying your last link he would superimpose your name at the bottom of the screen – something much coveted by announcers.

“While I was there Anglia introduced an Aston machine which generated the captions electronically and in all sorts of colours. You could also crawl them across the screen.

“Most TCs played with this and created all sorts of name captions including a very long one with lots of joke middle names for Michael Speake late one night. Not sure if anyone got told off for it but I thought it a hoot.”

Sharing the studio

“The legendary Anglia weatherman Michael Hunt would inhabit the continuity studio to do his weather forecast after News at Ten, so you’d sit there as long as you could in case the news programme went down, then jump out of the seat so he could get lined-up.

“I’d been watching Michael for years doing the weather and he was a real gentleman and I was in awe of him. I was surprised when he first came in and said to me, ‘Please always call me Michael when you announce me, don’t shorten my name to Mike.’

“I, of course agreed straight away. I mentioned this to the TC afterwards and he said say ‘Mike Hunt’ quickly. I soon realised why it was a problem.

“However I was told that in his early days of continuity announcing that David Hamilton revelled in the shortened version, much to Michael’s annoyance.

“One of the duties of the day announcer was to record ten-second local commercials which were voiceovers on slides for various local businesses. They were always a bit of a bind and after a while there was a separate cupboard sized studio in which to do these.”

Further correspondence

Paul R. Jackson corresponded with David in December 2017 and asked about his early career and his time at BBC Norwich:

“I was a partner in an entertainment agency – Norwich Artistes – from 1974 – 1983, which ran concurrently with my broadcasting work for a while, but one eventually took over from the other.

“Once I was offered the weekday mid-morning show on Radio Norfolk I left the agency. In fact the reason I manoeuvred my way into BBC Norfolk when it started in September 1980 was by going in to talk about the local entertainment scene once a week.

”I did mostly newsreading shifts, which involved regular appearances on Look East as the news bulletin reader rather than co-presenter, but did present it a few times over the years.

“At Anglia TV, I worked with Helen McDermott on my first link for Southern TV’s Houseparty and there was no sound. They put a holding announcement for the fault and then they went to a stand-by tape, Survival: The Elephant that Walked on Air.

“I stayed on the BBC East TV rota until 1987, when my Radio 4 work had me all over the country.”

Have you kept in touch with any ex-colleagues?

“I’m in touch with Ian Masters (BBC East), Tom Edwards, Helen McDermott, Andy Archer (Tyne Tees and pirate DJ) and Katie Glass.”

 

Personal information

Clips of David on The TV Room

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Online presence

Acknowledgements